In 2001 Lurie published a memoir, Familiar Spirits, recounting a decades-long friendship with poet James Merrill (1926–1995) and his partner David Jackson (1922–2001).
"It was, I often thought, the happiest marriage I knew," wrote Alison Lurie, who got to know both men in the 1950s and thought enough of the relationship to write a memoir about it more than forty years later, Familiar Spirits (2001).
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With the help of a Ouija Board, they would complete The Changing Light at Sandover over the following seven years.
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The two men met in May 1953 in New York City, after a performance of Merrill's play, "The Bait." They shared homes in Stonington, CT, Athens, and Key West.
The (unnamed) narrators of the poem are Merrill and his partner David Jackson, who together — after a Ouija board had been given to Merrill as a present by his friend Frederick Buechner in the early 1950s — would conduct hundreds of private séance sessions over the course of nearly four decades, an undertaking Merrill would come to mine extensively for "material."
Michael Jackson | David Bowie | David Lynch | Andrew Jackson | David | Late Show with David Letterman | Peter Jackson | Janet Jackson | David Cameron | David Beckham | Jackson | David Lloyd George | David Hume | Jackson Pollock | David Hockney | Jackson, Mississippi | David Letterman | David Byrne | David J. Eicher | Samuel L. Jackson | David Mamet | David Foster | Late Night with David Letterman | David Ben-Gurion | Jacques-Louis David | David Guetta | David Carradine | Henry David Thoreau | Port Jackson | Jackson Browne |